Editorial: Feinstein's zero tolerance for snooping should extend to NSA

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, tells Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx to be cautious about the evolution of small, unmanned drone aircraft and the threat to Americans? privacy, at a Senate Transportation subcommittee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, March 13, 2014. A dispute between the CIA and Sen. Feinstein flared into public view this week when, in an extraordinary floor speech, she accused the CIA of improperly searching a computer network the spy agency had set up for lawmakers investigating the George W. Bush-era interrogation program for suspected terrorists. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

The California senator who chairs the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee has been unapologetic in her support for the National Security Agency’s spying on Americans. But now we find she has zero tolerance for the CIA’s alleged hacking into her committee’s computers and possibly removing documents pertinent to an investigation.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s request for an FBI inquiry into the CIA’s conduct deserves support. It might be easier to obtain if she’d made even a token gesture to rein in the NSA’s persistent overreaches.

But her proposal to reform the NSA is “a joke,” says the author of the Patriot Act, Wisconsin Rep. James Sensenbrenner.

He says her idea of reform only confirms that “there is no limit — apparently, according to the NSA — on what they can collect. That has to be stopped.”

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It’s been nine months since Americans learned that the NSA is collecting and storing information about phone calls, including whom people call and where they’re calling from. The agency also has been monitoring texts and emails that originate abroad.

When veteran senators including Arizona’s John McCain demanded that a special committee investigate the NSA, Feinstein blocked them. She rejected President Barack Obama’s suggestion that any data collected could be held by telecommunications firms for use by the NSA if the need was shown.

Feinstein’s bill would just codify the NSA’s practices into law, including a green light for continued hacking through tech companies’ encryption to cull data. The cost to the tech industry from NSA spying has been estimated at nearly $200 billion by 2016. European and Asian customers understandably don’t want U.S. products if their security is suspect.

Yes, the CIA’s shenanigans should be investigated. But Feinstein should show the same level of concern for other Americans’ privacy rights as she demands for her committee’s.